Last December, Bob Toledo was home with his wife watching Rocky Long’s Aztecs battle BYU in the Poinsettia Bowl, when the missus made what at the time seemed like an inconsequential remark.

“You know,” Elaine Toledo told her husband, the retired football coach. “If you ever went back to coaching, Rocky would be the only guy I’d let you go back for. I really like Rocky.”

Prophecy? Sure looks like it now.

A week later, the phone call came: Long had just lost offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig to bigger money and greener pastures in Madison, Wis., and he wanted to know if his old friend Bob Toledo might be interested in the position.

“Let me talk to my wife,” Toledo told Long during that initial phone call, knowing full well that Elaine wasn’t likely to object to this opportunity.

Three months later, Toledo is finishing up his first spring as the Aztecs’ offensive coordinator.

As it turns out, there was never much of a question as to whether he would accept Long’s job offer.

Shortly after that first phone call, the Toledos made the easy trip down to San Diego from their home in Thousand Oaks to meet the Aztecs’ coaching staff and tour the campus.

Long had made it clear that he was just hiring a coordinator, not an entire offensive football staff. So right off the bat, Toledo’s biggest concern was how SDSU’s offensive coaches would take to him.

“I knew Jeff (Horton, the running backs coach) and I knew of those other guys, but I hadn’t really coached with them, so I wanted to talk to them and find out if they could live with me being the coordinator and calling the plays,” Toledo said, in an interview last week. “I came away feeling very comfortable. So my wife and I went back and the next day I called Rocky and told him I’d take the job.”

Just like that, two old friends were reunited for the third time in their extensive football coaching careers.

If history is any indication, this could be a very lucrative partnership. Toledo and Long have seen success everywhere they’ve coached together.

Their friendship dates back to the late eighties, when Toledo was the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M and Long was the secondary coach 180 miles away at Texas Christian University.

Over the next three decades, their coaching path would cross three times – always by design.

When Toledo became the offensive coordinator at UCLA in 1994, his Bruins butted heads with Oregon State, where Long had just been hired as defensive coordinator.

His unusual 3-3-5 defense gave Toledo nightmares.

“We had to compete against each other, and obviously he created more problems for me offensively than any coach I’d faced,” Toledo said. “So when I got the head job at UCLA, he was one of the first guys I hired because I wanted him on my staff.”

In their one season together at UCLA in 1997, Toledo and Long led the Bruins to a share of the Pac-10 championship and a No. 5 national ranking.

Then Long took the head coaching job at his alma mater, New Mexico, where his defense and Toledo’s offense once again dovetailed in 2006, when Toledo became the offensive coordinator for a year, before moving on to a head coaching job at Tulane.

That season, the Lobos finished 6-7 and made a bowl game for the fourth time in five years.

Things didn’t work out for Toledo at Tulane – “They were coming off Hurricane Katrina and struggling, and they’re still struggling,” Toledo said. “I was going to give them five years to see if I could get the program off the ground. We struggled, it was hard. At that point I retired.” ... Only to return to football a year later and reunite with his old friend.

Known for his offensive prowess, Toledo is enjoying the fact that his new position at SDSU allows him to just focus on the X’s and O’s.

He doesn’t have to worry about juggling the boosters, and media and the hundreds of other things that fall within a head coach’s jurisdiction.

But he gets to be on the sidelines during games, calling plays and directing his offense. He gets to help players develop and mentor young coaches such as the Aztecs’ offensive line coach Mike Schmidt.

“It suits me,” said Toledo, 67. “I’m at a point in my life where I want to do what I enjoy and do it the best I can and not have to worry about those other fringe type things.”

As a bonus, he gets to coach with Long.

The friendship Long and Toledo share is a unique one. Close as they are, they don’t really see each other much off the field.

“Rocky’s kind of a private person anyway, he’s not going to go out, he’s not a party animal… that’s just not his nature,” Toledo said. “So we’re probably not going to be tight buddies and hang around all the time. But I enjoy being with him. We laugh, he’s a fun guy, and he’s got a lot of charisma when he’s around his friends.”

Their bond is forged from their love for the tactical side of football. Both men are the sort of coaches who would much rather huddle up in the film room and dissect plays, than shake a hundred hands while answering questions from a phalanx of reporters.

And they've always had chemistry together.

“I wouldn’t have gone back to work for anyone but Rocky Long,” Toledo said. “We have a mutual respect. I appreciate what he does, and I think he appreciates what I do and likes what I do.”

Never one to micromanage, Long has also given Toledo the latitude to make all the decisions on the offensive side of the ball.

“He just trusts me to get the job done,” Toledo said. “We’ve got great rapport, a great understanding, and we bounce things off each other.”

But the most important thing Long gives Toledo is the gift that comes on every series of every football game they’ve ever coached together.

“The big thing is that he has the ability to get me the ball back,” Toledo said. “He plays good defense, which gives me the opportunity to get the ball more.”